For B2B founders who are still the main closer

"I'm still the only one who closes."

Q: How do I stop being the only closer in my company?

Write down how you sell as a fixed sequence and coach your team on it. The 8 Steps of the Repeatable Sale give your hires the same questions, in the same order, that you use by instinct, so deals no longer need you in the room to close.

Q: Why don't my new sales hires perform?

Usually because there is no repeatable sales process to hand them. They improvise, pitch too early and send proposals before the buyer has named the cost of inaction. Give them the steps and the right order, and coach on which step a stalled deal skipped.

Q: When should a founder make the first sales hire?

When you can describe your sale as steps someone else can run. Hire before that and the new person learns by watching you, which keeps you as the closer. Hire after it and they have a process to follow from week one.

You hired salespeople so you could stop being the bottleneck. The big deals still land on your desk. Here's why, and what changes it.

Book a discovery call

Sound familiar?

Your team books the meetings. Then the prospect asks for you. Or the deal gets to the proposal and stalls until you step in.

So you step in. You close it, because you always do. And on Monday it's the same again: every important deal runs through your calendar.

You don't have time to work on the sales process. Only in it. Your first sales hire, maybe your second, sits in the meetings, takes notes, and the deal still waits for you to join the call. 🐬

Picture next Thursday. Three proposals out, two discovery calls booked, a hire waiting for feedback, and your own week already full. Which one gets your attention? The one closest to the money. Everything else waits.

What it costs

Growth stops at the edge of your week. When you're closing, nobody is prospecting, so the pipeline dries up a month later. The annual target slips, and you start wondering if you'll hit it at all.

Every new sales hire costs salary and months of ramp, and they still have nobody to call and no clear way to sell. Sales stops being fun. For you and for them.

The real source

It isn't your hires. And it isn't you.

The sales process lives in your head. You read the buyer, ask the right question at the right moment, and know when to stop talking. That instinct took years. Nobody wrote it down, so nobody else can run it.

When a new hire sells "their own way", the right things happen in the wrong order. They pitch before the buyer has named the frustration. They send the proposal before the buyer has said what doing nothing costs. Then the deal waits for you.

The fix: write the sale down, in order

The 8 Steps of the Repeatable Sale turn your instinct into a sequence anyone on your team can run. Three steps matter most when you hand the sale over:

Step 2, Frustration. Your hire asks what's frustrating and what the buyer has already tried, instead of opening with the deck.

Step 4, Cost of Inaction. The buyer says what happens if nothing changes. That's the moment the deal stops depending on your charisma.

Step 7, Starting Date. Every call ends with a committed date, not "let's touch base". Your hire stays in control of the conversation, the way you do.

Then you coach on the steps, not on personality. You look at a stalled deal and see which step was skipped. Founder-led sales becomes a team that closes. 🐯

What changes

Your hire runs a discovery call while you listen, and you hear them ask Step 4 and then wait. The buyer answers. The call ends with a starting date, and you didn't say a word.

The Statement of Work goes out in the buyer's words, written by your hire. Your Friday review shows which steps each deal reached, so coaching becomes a short review instead of a rescue call.

And your calendar opens up. Evenings back. Time to work on the business, not only in it. 🌴

3 questions your new hire asks on their next call

Step 2

"What's the frustration? What have you already tried?"

Step 4

"What happens if you do nothing?"

Step 7

"To which starting date are we committing?"

Sit in on the call. Don't rescue it. Count how many of the three get asked, in that order.

Who's behind this

Simon Severino

Founder of Strategy Sprints, based in Vienna. 2,400+ B2B founders have gone through our programs, practising the 8 Steps of the Repeatable Sale until they lead the conversation again.

Before Strategy Sprints, Simon coached 2,000+ teams, including Google, BMW and Airbus.

Questions founders ask

How do I stop being the only closer in my company?

Why don't my new sales hires perform?

When should a founder make the first sales hire?

Your next call

Want your team closing without you in the room? On a discovery call we look at how your deals close today and where they wait for you. If it's a fit, the 90-Day Sales Acceleration installs the process so your team runs it.